Area nurses receiving salary spikes

The torrid pace of hospital construction in the Jacksonville area is turning the screws on an already tight market for nurses. And area hospitals are now paying for the resulting shortage.

St. Vincent's Medical Center is spending about $2.4 million in pay hikes for non-management nurses, to keep salaries competitive. Baptist Health spent about $3.4 million in similar salary increases for nursing staff this year. Shands Jacksonville also spent nearly $200,000 to increase the salary of 870 workers, primarily in nursing positions. The raises are on top of annual merit increases.

Mayo Clinic, which operates St. Luke's Hospital, gave its 5,000 workers a salary increase, but was tight-lipped on how many millions of dollars the move cost. Memorial Hospital and Flagler Hospital also handed out increases, but declined to disclose financial details.

Registered staff nurses in the Jacksonville area make a median salary of about $54,144 annually, according to Salary.com. That compares with a nationwide median of about $56,700.

Baptist Health, which operates five area hospitals, opened a 300-employee hospital in south Jacksonville in February and is planning a similar facility in Clay County. Crosstown rival Memorial Hospital is planning a 200-employee outpatient campus, while the Mayo Clinic is prepping to build a 216-bed hospital at its campus.

While the ballooning bed capacity is stoking wage inflation among nursing jobs, industry experts say the increase is also being driven by an overall increase in wages economywide.

The Baptist raise, the second such increase in about 18 months, was paid to nearly 1,350 employees deemed to be making less than the market rate, said Diane Raines, the group's chief nursing officer. The market rate is determined by regional and statewide salary surveys, she said.

Nursing staff account for about one-third of Baptist's annual payroll, Raines said. Payroll typically accounts for nearly 40 percent of a hospital's operating budget, according to the Florida Hospital Association.

Baptist's market adjustment increase, about 5 percent on average, brought nursing staff on par with the market rate, Raines said. Nurses with 10 years experience at Baptist, on average, make about $25 an hour.

"You have to be market competitive in order to attract people," Raines said. "Our HR department analyzes" employee salaries at least once every two years.

The wage increase at St. Vincent's, which will affect about 900 nurses, will take effect between now and January, said Kim Deppe, vice president of marketing and communication at St. Vincent's. The salary increase will allow St. Vincent's to remain competitive in attracting and retaining nurses.

"We routinely check to make sure that our employees ... are making market rates," Deppe said. "So from time to time we'll adjust salaries as needed."

Labor shortages typically trigger market adjustments in salaries.

The nurse shortage in the Jacksonville market varies between 3.5 percent to 10 percent depending on the hospital, said Li Loriz, director for the School of Nursing at the University of North Florida.

The shortage is fueled partly because "we don't have enough students coming out of [nursing] school," Raines said.

To shore up the labor pool, local hospitals contribute financially to area nursing schools to help boost faculty hiring, Raines said. Baptist, among others, also offers scholarships to non-nursing employees who wish to become nurses.

Nursing schools in Northeast Florida graduate more than 500 students annually, Loriz said. She blames the shortage on high attrition in the nursing profession.

"The work is stressful and the hours long," Loriz said.

Ensuring an adequately staffed nursing department can help minimize long shifts and support services like counseling help harried nurses decompress, Raines said.

The competition for nurses goes beyond crosstown competitors. Area hospitals compete for talent with medical facilities in cities like Savannah, Ga., Orlando and Gainesville, Raines said.

"We're pretty fortunate in Jacksonville that we don't have a big city right next to us to compete with," she said.

The median salary for a registered staff nurse is $54,937 in Orlando, $51,479 in Gainesville and $54,427 in Savannah, according to Salary.com.

Raines and Loriz agree that the spurt in new hospital bed construction also inflames the shortage.

By adding beds and creating more nursing jobs, hospitals increase the demand for those positions, which helps jack up wages, Raines said.

When a hospital has difficulty finding workers it might raise salaries, which can trigger similar increases by competitors, St. Vincent's Deppe said.

"We like to make sure that we are competitive in the marketplace," she said.

Despite the jockeying over wage rates, salary is not the No. 1 determinant of nurse satisfaction.

Autonomy in decision-making, work schedules and job specialty can carry more weight, Loriz said.

"Anybody that wants to become a millionaire," she said, "is not going to go into nursing."